Monday, April 14, 2014

When preparing my first offering in Debbie Brown's English Epochs 101blog hop devoted to main characters in recently completed work or work-in-progress, I slipped into a lucid dream in which my character Daisy Kirkcaldy was doing battle with a modern woman whose name is Sydney and who is a writer of historical fiction. As usual, when the conflict is between Daisy and a writer, Daisy wins. But Syd was not entirely defeated. She was resting. And now she demands and introduction an equal time. I find it meet and proper that I interview her for you, using Debbie Brown's excellent set of questions.

Linda: Sydney, what is your name and are you fictional or an actual historical character?

Sydney: My name is Sydney Jameson, at least insofar as I am concerned, although there are other names that some people persist in using to tag me. One of them is The Green Woman, but I am only called that by people who experience my aura and are familiar with the myths surrounding the Green Woman of Ferniehirst. My Scottish lover Dand Ker calls me Helena because when he was a young man at the Sorbonne he read a book about Helen of Troy and he is fixated. Scottish men are often like that. I am a historical novelist with three recent novels being marketed by a small publishing house owned by a man named Simon Dirst. This entire misadventure is entirely Simon's creation. He insisted on doing a book launch in the Great Hall at Ferniehirst, a castle on the Borders where my stories take place. No! that's not fair. My weird adventure on the Borders is wholly mine, not Simon's. No sense giving him credit where none is due. Even if he hadn't wanted to come here so he could golf at Gleneagles with Sir Sean and write it off on his taxes as a business expense, I would have found my way here anyway.

Linda: I gather that the novel The Green Woman takes place at the site of the book launch at Ferniehirst Castle near Jedburgh. Is that correct?

Sydney: Not entirely. It depends on whether you consider Ferniehirst in 2012 and Ferniehirst in 1612 the same place. You and I both know they are not. One exists in what Nemesis calls Dand Ker's Now Time and the other is in my Now Time, which I call the Present.

Linda: That brings us to an extra pair of questions - Who is Nemesis and have you been venturing dangerously close to microwave towers lately. Oh, and if you've been drinking, where is the still located and is the hooch for sale?

Sydney: Nemesis is a Goddess from Greek mythology- the Goddess of Retribution. She is a second tier god, a Daemon. She maintains equilibrium and punishes unjust enrichment. Sometimes she assumes the aspect of a Guardian. That is straight out of Wikipedia and the web. And as to whether I have been drinking, Linda, you are the one who wrote me into the pub frequented by the entire Jedburgh Rugby Club, who bought me drinks when they discovered I knew what scrum-half means.

Linda: Next question: What should we know about you before we delve into this rather odd story?

Sydney: Come on now, Linda. You know me better than I know myself. Why don't you answer the question?

Linda: I'll break it down: Are you mortal?

Sydney: I am a 100% mortal California divorcee who writes books for a living and who for some reason seems to appear with a green aura when I visit Ferniehirst in 1612. If some of the characters in my story see me as The Green Woman, that is their problem, not mine. The rest of the time I am like everyone else. There is a possibility that I may be susceptible to the phenomenon called Lucid Dreaming or perhaps the task of writing has simply driven me mad. You wrote me. You solve it. And if you want to know what Lucid Dreaming is, read some of the books you bought when you were doing your research.

Linda: So what is the main conflict? What messes up your life?

Sydney: Hah! Try falling into an intense relationship with a man who has been dead for more than Three Hundred and Seventy years and thinks you are the one who is not real. And that's before you even get to the part where we try to save King James and rescue the Duke of Rothesay, who grows up to be Charles II, which begs the question of why we bothered. And of course, it does not help my relationship with Dand that I know what happens in the future and have sworn not to tell.

Linda: Sworn to Whom?

Sydney: If I told Dand what was coming he would change it and that would upset the Equilibrium. You sort it out. And no spoilers.Linda: But what does Sydney expect to get out of this? What's your goal?Sydney: It would be nice to say my goal was to save King James VI and I and the Stuart Monarchy but that would be pure posh. My goal is to find a life beyond what is written on my Toshiba laptop. I want to feel life, not just write about it. Ask Nemesis. She has a canned speech memorized that covers it.Linda: Is there anything you'd like to ask me, Sydney?Sydney: I'd like to know if you are seriously going to self-publish a madcap mixed genre lightly erotic tale about a historical novelist who is forever linked to events which happened in 1612, who is deeply connected to a lover who died in 1628, who identifies with a Daemon Goddess named Nemesis who may be a construct of her imagination or an alter ego, and who even after the final page is not quite certain what is real and what is not. Linda: Watch me. I cannot spend all of my time writing heavily factual historical novels centering on the life and time of the Queen of Scots and populated for the most part by real people. And one last question, Sydney. It seems to have slipped my mind, but where exactly is it that you learned to throw a Jed Axe?

The novel The Green Woman is essentially finished, awaiting two rounds of editing, cover art and illustrations. At present I am engaged in an exhaustive rewrite adjusting inconsistencies in point-of-view. I will be submitting this to beta readers from a group of people who venture into this type of writing. It is substantially shorter than my other novels, weighing in at 75,000 words. My target launch date is the anniversary of Wild Frank Stewart's death in Naples in November of 1612. This deviation from my heavily historical novels was not at all intentional. Like Nemesis, it more or less hatched out of a green egg and grew during the madness of the NaNoWriMo competition in November 2013. The initial draft was written in 27 days of nearly non-stop writing which explains why it resembles stories written by opium addicts and absinthe drinkers. It is different from my other works, which is why I am publishing it under a pseudonym J.D. Root. Why not? After all, I am Linda Root, J.D., and this way I will not embarrass my wonderful friends who are serious writers of English Historical fiction, as am I at least 90% of the time. This book arises during the 10% when I write out of genre and drink a wee bit of Jameson's Gold Reserve. And no, that is not where Sydney got her name. The inspiration for her name is a secret known only to aging fans of the Cleveland Indians baseball franchise. Truthfully, there is a good deal of research in the book, not just about events surrounding the death of Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales, and the never ending plotting of Lord Francis Stewart, aka Wild Frank, but about such topics as the archetype in fiction, the life of Alexander Seton and the phenomena of Lucid Dreaming, Out of Body Experiences and the Oz Factor. And yes, there is a sequel. If you want a glimpse, the prologue appears below. It presents no graphic sex but there are sexual references and erotic innuendos .

PROLOGUE

Present day Edinburgh

The man did not have a copy of the book, but
he had a copy of the book jacket folded in the pocket of his windbreaker. The windbreaker was blue and white and under
it he wore a blue tee with the word NAPOLI embossed in white, and beneath it,
the name Emilio Lara and a number.

He did not know why he was wearing either of
the items or why he was in Scotland. He
did not understand most of the English spoken by the staff at the hotel, and
knew none of the Scots spoken on the streets and in the taverns. He especially did not like the weather. His
last memory was being in Naples sharing a small cup of sweet liqueur with his
Master, and even that was vague, as if in a dream. That was before the headaches came.

Whenever he trolled for answers as to why he
was trailing the woman whose picture was on the back cover of the book, he
would experience a spiking pain in his head and in his bandaged knee, and would seek relief from the elixir he
carried in a pocket flask. When people
passed him they often stared at his jacket and some of them patted him on the
back. They called him by the name
Emilio, but that was not his true name. He did not know why they called him out
in such a manner and he did not understand their speech well enough to ask. He
smiled back at them and shrugged because it was the easiest way to satisfy them
without causing him to lose sight of the woman.

He did not recognize his image in the shop
windows. The man reflected back at him
was sturdier and younger, with dark curly hair like a Sicilian and an Italian
way about him manifested in a swagger exacerbated by a limp. He would
have liked to stake a permanent claim to the man’s physique.

He had awakened that morning in a park
outside of Edinburgh, dressed in the same unfamiliar clothing he was presently
wearing. He made his way to the hotel on a route that had been revealed to him
that morning in his waking dream. The papers in the pocket of his jacket included
a thin wine-colored booklet called a Passporto with a likeness of the man he
saw reflected in the shop windows pasted on its first page. He followed
the instructions of his Master with precision and without hesitation or pain-inducing
questions: he handed the booklet to a pretty woman at the counter, and he saw
that the name printed under the photograph affixed there was indeed Emilio
Lara. She handed him a room key and
asked him if he needed help with his luggage. He did not understand the question and
shrugged, and the clerk went to serve the other customers.

He pocketed the key and took a seat in the
lobby.

When the woman appeared, he followed her down
the High Street to a café where she ordered breakfast while he sat at the
counter, picked on a scone and
drank a pot of Breakfast Tea. When she
was finished, he followed her back to the hotel, annoyed that he had been given
no opportunity to fulfill his mission.

He resumed his vigil in the lobby where he
could watch for her if she left, and took a swallow of the elixir from the little
flask his Master had given him because the pains would return if he did not do
so. It had a pleasant taste which the Master attributed to pearl dust. The drug no longer made him dizzy. Its effect
had become less medicinal and more euphoric. His Master told him it was
laudanum with something special added.
The man had asked what could be
more exceptional than pearl dust and his master had given him the Evil Eye after which the man abandoned the
inquiry least he lose his tongue.

The scene in the lobby blurred and as the man
had anticipated, he descended into a dream-like trance during which he could
hear his Master’s voice. Sometimes in such trances he could fly and in some, he
would be borne across the water on the wings of serpents, but not on this
occasion. When he awakened from his reverie, it was as if no time had passed.
The shadows in the lobby had not changed and the hands on the clock above the
desk had barely moved.

When
the woman he was trailing left the hotel he watched a porter assist her with
her bags. After the doorman helped her into a motor carriage, the man had no
way to follow her. He knew that the woman was not coming back. He relaxed and
sipped some of the potion.

In his dream his master appeared to him in
the fearsome persona of a giant black swan with a huge red proboscis shaped
like a phallus. On the first occasion when his master had visited him in such a
form, the man had thought him beautiful, but only until he witnessed the
carnage the swan inflicted in its pursuit of sexual release and the
voraciousness of its appetite for violence.

Thereafter, the man acknowledged the black swan
as the most frightening of his overlord’s various aspects.

The man knew that in following the
instructions he had been given in the dream, he would find himself possessed of
the necessary skills to do as he had been ordained and there would be no excuse
for failure. He also knew better than to question his master’s methods or his
purpose. If he violated the protocol, his Master would use him as if were a
street whore and leave him in a simpering heap on the floor. And that was if
his overlord was in one of his more benevolent moods.

In his sparse and heavily accented English he
asked the concierge to arrange a rental car. The clerk at the car rental
obviously knew the man whose likeness he had assumed.

“A’right, Emilio! Good tae see ya again. Ma mates and ah hated tae see ya leave
Manchester but ah suppose ya like bein’ close tae home and all.

“And, too bad about the knee. It ain’t no fun getting knocked up like that
in what looks tae be a winning season.”

The man in the white and blue windbreaker had
no idea what this was about, but he thanked the man and took the keys.

“It’s the SUV at the curb, the one the lad is
detailin’ for ya.”

When the boy finished with the
windows, he opened the door for the man to enter, and just as the man had
expected, he knew exactly what to do with the key to make the strange motor carriage
work. He did not question how any of this was
possible. It neither surprised nor excited him to find himself driving a metal
beast called a Land Rover down a highway out of Edinburgh to Jedburgh.

He was doing his Master’s bidding and when
the Master’s purpose was achieved, he would become himself again and would
remember none of it. He would be back in
Naples in the company of his overlord who would assume his human form and
reward him with ecstasies no women could produce.

He followed the instructions
given him and made his way to Ferniehirst to deal with the woman
whose picture was on the jacket of the book. He had a paper in his pocket upon
which the Master had written the words La Donna Verde, the
Green Woman.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Daisy Kirkcaldy sat in the sumptuous parlor of the
Cockie Mansion in Canongate where she had lived for most of her life. She was sipping a warm cup of light ale. If she
had been by herself, she would have been enjoying a few fingers worth of the golden brown
elixir from the stills along the river Spey.

Scottish whisky had surpassed hard ale as the
drink of choice in the better public houses. It was also the preferred offering served to clients who visited Daisy Kirkcaldy’s drawing room. Her frequent foreign guests had taken to calling it Scotch.

Unfortunately, her present visitor would have
considered a Highland single malt inelegant and sinful. According to the stories
she had been told, even Knox had not been quite as rigid as the woman perched on the edge of her settee.

She was entertaining her cousin Elizabeth Melville
who was touted as Scotland’s first published female poet by a Calvinist
readership which refused to acknowledge
Lady Mary Maitland’s lesbian love
poem XLIX. Mary Maitland had
surreptitiously hidden her poem among the less controversial works in her poet laureate father Sir Richard Maitland’s Quattro or it never would have been published. The only hint she
was its author was her scribbling in the margin notes. Her family’s efforts to
suppress it came too late.

Daisy’s cousin Elizabeth’s verses suffered no need of censorship by the kirk. Her latest
poetry would be quoted from the pulpit
at Saint Giles by Parson Craig, and Elizabeth would treat it as her personal passport into heaven. That did not mean Daisy would bother reading it.

Dame Elizabeth
Melville was Daisy’s second cousin on
her father’s side --the oldest daughter of the man Daisy called Uncle Melville.
He was the youngest brother of the grandmother long dead before Daisy was born,
the redoubtable Janet Melville, Lady
Grange, who had been the last hostess to
entertain King James V, when he stopped at Halyards on his way to his hunting lodge in
Falkland where he went to die.

Most of what Daisy knew of her family history she
had heard from Uncle Melville. She loved
the old man fiercely but she could not
say as much for his daughter. Even when
they were children, Elizabeth had treated Daisy with disdain because of
her bastardy, as if it had been her
personal choice. Her unannounced visit that
afternoon was as surprising as a visitation from the dying Elizabeth of England would have
been. It also was far less welcome. Daisy had twice met the English queen and had
been more at ease in the presence of
Gloriana than she was under Elizabeth Melville’s appraising stare.

“I must say, Marguerite, considering all of your
handicaps, you have made out rather well for yourself.”

Daisy, who rarely answered to the French version
of her Christian name, recognized her cousin’s comment as a mean-spirited
reference to the circumstances of her birth, made even more exasperating

Darja Vorontsova, Dreamstime

because
it had been disguised as a compliment coming from a woman who did not know her
well enough to call her by the name used by her friends. It only irritated
Daisy all the more. She had been in the
middle of a project when Elizabeth arrived and was anxious to get back to it.

For that reason, she did
not bother responding to Elizabeth’s slight. The sooner the woman said her piece, the
sooner Daisy would be rid of her. She had a good idea of why Elizabeth had come knocking at her door.

“But Cousin
Elizabeth, I am not all that exceptional. There are many widow women in this
part of Scotland who have learned tae fend for themselves.”

Daisy knew her widowhood was not the handicap to
which Elizabeth had alluded but she had no intention of inviting the woman to elaborate. She was pleased when
her crisp response shut her cousin’s
maw. She had no intention of apologizing for her mother’s common origins and her own bastardy or sharing a bed with Will Hepburn before they
married. She had suffered through that
diatribe before. And that was not the
sum of it. More than one of her business acquaintances in Canongate had run to
her to tattle tales of her supercilious
cousin’s slights, but rarely had they
been so prettily packaged. Obviously Elizabeth was attempting to soften her up
before coming the point and had no idea of how insulting she had been.

Daisy was prepared to overlook the stiff-necked
woman’s disapproval because she, not Elizabeth, held the upper hand. The only reason why the Elizabeth Melvilles
of Scotland came calling on Canongate’s notorious wadwife was to borrow money.

The awkward silence which followed suited Daisy
just fine. She wished her cousin would
get to the point of her visit and leave her to her endeavors in the gallery
where her half-brother Gilbert Cockie ran his shop.

“I have written a new poem,” Elizabeth proclaimed
as if she were announcing the recovery of the Stone of Destiny from the English
or the Second Coming of Christ. Daisy
had no interest whatsoever in religious poetry, and did not bother to feign
astonishment.

She spared the courtesy of a nod and reached for a slice
of Irish cheddar.

Then she
sat back and nibbled, waiting for the pitch she knew was coming.

“Mister Charteris wishes to publish it.”

“How lovely, Elizabeth,” Daisy said sweetly.

“He also plans to have it translated into English,
and a proper translator does not work for a petty fee. Naturally, he would like
me to help bear the costs of printing. ”

“Naturally.”

Now the pig was out of the poke and Daisy saw no
reason to chase it around the parlor.

“And ye are here because ye would like me tae
underwrite yer project-- How much do ya wish to borrow?”

Elizabeth choked on her biscuit and it took her a few seconds to recover.

“I was thinking more in terms of a sponsorship,
Marguerite.”

Daisy produced her most credible sigh.

“I think the word which alludes you, Elizabeth, is
gift, ” she managed to say without
sounding too put out.

Now she understood why Uncle Melville had exited with such alacrity. Elizabeth had wanted the money but she had no
intention of repaying it. .

“If I were tae do so, every poet in Scotland woulds
be knockin’ at ma door. But since we are
cousins of the second degree, I’ll be waivin’ the usual collateral, and lowerin’ the rate to
seven percent a’ whate’er you choose tae borrow, all out ‘a the love I hold in
ma heart for Uncle Melville.”

For him, not
ye, ye offensive twit.

She hoped Elizabeth could read her mind.

Daisy wondered how long it would take Cousin
Elizabeth to close her mouth. When she finally spoke, she was obviously
taken aback, but not enough to refuse the offer. All of the other moneylenders were charging
their parents and their children ten percent.

“It is
called Ane Godlie Dream. I am dedicating it to Mister Knox. Shall I have Mister Charteris set aside a
copy?”

Daisy thanked her politely. Any poem dedicated to John Knox would be
unlikely to hold her interest, but there was no sense provoking Elizabeth.
She could put it on display when her brother Gilbert’s Presbyterian
friends came to meetings in the gallery.

She bit her
tongue to keep it from wagging on the topic of
the Reformer least it prompt her
overly pious kinswoman to spiel a sermon
on the seven deadly sins. Elizabeth had them memorized.

She had personified each with examples drawn from
Edinburgh’s new merchant class. She insisted Greed had been modeled on the late wadwife Janet Fockart, but Daisy
suspected Elizabeth had used her
own bastard cousin as her model. God’s
Elbow, but she was anxious to see her cousin’s skirts rustling out the door so
she could get back to work.

“Faither says the Episcopalians will hate it,” Elizabeth
continued, as if it would enhance her poem’s value.

“Mayhap ye should exercise discretion and forego
dedicating it to Knox. In spite of the
behavior of his disciples, he is quite
dead and unless he resurrects, he will never know the difference. Besides, if
what I am hearing is true, this is not a good time to be offending those who
follow the Episcopal model. If the rumors which reach my ears serve me, we may
all be reading from the English common prayer book soon.”

Thankfully Daisy’s reference to Knox and religion
were enough to get Elizabeth back on her feet and headed for the door. When she
had cleared the stoop, Daisy quickly closed the door and latched it. She emptied
her mug of ale into a flower vase and filled it up with
whisky from the Meldrum stills. She carried the cup with her and headed
to the gallery to finished
carving the wax for Queen Anna’s last brooch. The thought of her cousin’s
retreating rump improved her mood.

The great friend of English historical fiction writers author Debbie Brown, manager of the Facebook page and blog of the English Historical Fiction Authors, has inaugurated a chain of posts by historical fiction authors on her personal blog English Epochs 101 http://englishepochs.blogspot.com/2014/04/meet-my-main-character-by-debra-brown.html . In addition to her own post introducing Evangeline, the protagonist in her novel, she has taged five of us to present the main character of our work in progress or soon to be published novel. I am delighted to be chosen, because my protagonist has never been one to shirk the limelight. Ms. Brown sets out some questions which Daisy insists I answer.

The main character in both my most recently published book (The Other Daughter: Midwife's Secret II) and the one coming in May (1603: The Queen's Revenge) is Daisy Kirkcaldy, and she is also the star of my current work in progress, In the Shadow of the Gallows. Daisy is the fictional posthumous love child of Sir William Kirkcaldy, who held Edinburgh Castle as the last champion of the Queen of Scots. Her mother named her after the blue daisies (called marguerites in French) that the knight had broadcast on Castle Hill. There was a previous lass named Daisy living in the castle during the siege whom the knight had claimed as his. Hence the title of the previous book, The Other Daughter. There actually was a Marguerite de Kircaldie who was a nun in France, the co-protagonist in my first of the series The Midwife's Secret : The Mystery of the Hidden Princess. But there also was another actual child born of a laundress at the castle to whom Kirkcaldy was writing love poems while awaiting his death, a child about whom nothing else is known. The Daisy in my novels is a construct of my imagination. The other Marguerite was abbess of Saint Pierre les Dames from 1627 to her death in 1639.

When and where is the story set? Not surprisingly, the forthcoming novel 1603: The Queen's Revenge takes place during the months before Elizabeth Tudor's death and concludes with the departure of James VI to London to assume the throne that so alluded his mother Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots. Much of the story takes place in Scotland but the rising action sends Daisy to France and the Spanish Netherlands for the climax.What should we know about her? Daisy never knew her father, who was executed weeks before her birth, but she is fascinated by his history and identifies with him and with the two formidable women of her youth, Princess Jean Stewart, Countess of Argyll, and Mistress Janet Fockart, a successful entrepreneur and money lender. Although she is the child of an executed traitor, because of her mother's great beauty and sweet nature, Daisy matures in relative comfort as the step-daughter of William Cockie, a Scottish goldsmith favored by the Stuart court. In her frequent visits to Holyrood Palace, Daisy hooks up with another bastard of a famous father, William Hepburn, son of the Queen of Scot's flamboyant final husband Lord James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Their wild adventures and surprising romance is the subject of the novel The Other Daughter. In the beginning chapters of 1603, Daisy is a well-established wadwife and importer, still living at the Cockie house with her infant son Peter. Her swashbuckling husband Will Hepburn has been lost at sea.4) What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

Daisy is unable to move her life forward because she refuses to accept Hepburn's death, and her status makes her vulnerable to the advances of her nephew Sir Andrew Ker of Ferniehirst and open to the romantic overtures of Vice Chancellor William Fowler, her dead mentor Janet Fockart's son. Just when Daisy is about to put her past behind her she receives information from France concerning Hepburn's fate and becomes embroiled in the plot of Hepburn's cousin Wild Frank Stewart, the present Earl of Bothwell, who seeks to replace King James with the mysterious French nun La Belle Ecossaise, to whom Daisy has personal ties. Her impetuous nature will not allow her to sit back and let the men in her life handle the threat , a trait which puts her at odds with the tradtion role of women in the Scottish culture of the day. What is the personal goal of the character?

Because of her talents and her business acumen, Daisy can easily settle into a comfortable life as the wife of a member of Edinburgh's rising merchant class or even a baron or an earl, but instead, she struggles to maintain her own identity, even when it places her in conflict with the great loves of her life, interferes with her responsibilities to wee Peter, and throws her into volatile international intrigues placing her and those she loves in personal danger.5) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?The title is fairly settled as 1603: The Queen's Revenge. It is the third book in the Midwife's Secret series. You can read the first section below. It will be followed late in the year by the next of Daisy's adventures, In The Shadow of the Gallows, in which Daisy's wee Peter becomes a pawn of those who know of the Gunpowder Plot and seek to exploit it for reasons other than religion.6) When can we expect the book to be published? 1603 is presently in its final edit. The cover is ready to go. With a few modifications and the addition of some reading aids it should be ready in trade paperback in early May and on Kindle before June 1, 2014.

Thanks for visiting the post. I have tagged five authors to follow me: they will post an introduction of their main characters on the twelfth, hopefully. Helena Schrader will be posting on the 12th at her page: http://schradershistoricalfiction.blogspot.com/ I have also received a reply from Katherine Pym, who will be posting on or after the 12th. I am still waiting for any other RSVPs. I will be editing this post accordingly. In the meantime, here's a taste of 1603.

Sample from: 1603: The Queen's Revenge - Chapter One.

Daisy Kirkcaldy sat in the sumptuous parlor of the
Cockie Mansion in Canongate where she had lived for most of her life. She was sipping a warm cup of light ale. If she
had been by herself, she would have been enjoying a few fingers worth of the golden brown
elixir from the stills along the river Spey.

Scottish whisky had surpassed hard ale as the
drink of choice in the better public houses. It was also the preferred offering served to clients who visited Daisy Kirkcaldy’s drawing room. Her frequent foreign guests had taken to calling it Scotch.

Unfortunately, her present visitor would have
considered a Highland single malt inelegant and sinful. According to the stories
she had been told, even Knox had not been quite as rigid as the woman perched on the edge of her settee.

She was entertaining her cousin Elizabeth Melville
who was touted as Scotland’s first published female poet by a Calvinist
readership which refused to acknowledge
Lady Mary Maitland’s lesbian love
poem XLIX. Mary Maitland had
surreptitiously hidden her poem amongst the less controversial works in her poet laureate father Sir Richard Maitland’s Quattro or it never would have been published. The only hint she
was its author was her scribbling in the margin notes. Her family’s efforts to
suppress it came too late.

Daisy’s cousin Elizabeth’s verses suffered no need of censorship by the kirk. Her latest
poetry would be quoted from the pulpit
at Saint Giles by Parson Craig, and Elizabeth would treat it as her personal passport into heaven. That did not mean Daisy would bother reading it.

Dame Elizabeth
Melville was Daisy’s second cousin on
her father’s side --the oldest daughter of the man Daisy called Uncle Melville.
He was the youngest brother of the grandmother long dead before Daisy was born,
the redoubtable Janet Melville, Lady
Grange, who had been the last hostess to
entertain King James V, when he stopped at Halyards on his way to his hunting lodge in
Falkland where he went to die.

Most of what Daisy knew of her family history she
had heard from Uncle Melville. She loved
the old man fiercely but she could not
say as much for his daughter. Even when
they were children, Elizabeth had treated Daisy with distain because of
her bastardy, as if it had been her
personal choice. Her unannounced visit that
afternoon was as surprising as a visitation from the dying Elizabeth of England would have
been. It also was far less welcome. Daisy had twice met the English queen and had
been more at ease in the presence of
Gloriana than she was under Elizabeth Melville’s appraising stare.

“I must say, Marguerite, considering all of your
handicaps, you have made out rather well for yourself.”

Daisy, who rarely answered to the French version
of her Christian name, recognized her cousin’s comment as a mean-spirited
reference to the circumstances of her birth, made even more exasperting because
it had been disguised as a compliment coming from a woman who did not know her
well enough to call her by the name used by her friends. It only irritated
Daisy all the more. She had been in the
middle of a project when Elizabeth arrived and was anxious to get back to it.

For that reason, she did
not bother responding to Elizabeth’s slight. The sooner the woman said her piece, the
sooner Daisy would be rid of her. She had a good idea of why Elizabeth had come knocking at her door.

“But Cousin
Elizabeth, I am not all that exceptional. There are many widow women in this
part of Scotland who have learned tae fend for themselves.”

Daisy knew her widowhood was not the handicap to
which Elizabeth had alluded but she had no intention of inviting the woman to elaborate. She was pleased when
her crisp response shut her cousin’s
maw. She had no intenton of apologizing for her mother’s common origins and her own bastardy or sharing a bed with Will Hepburn before they
married. She had suffered through that
diatribe before. And that was not the
sum of it. More than one of her business acquaintances in Canongate had run to
her to tattle tales of her supercilious
cousin’s slights, but rarely had they
been so prettily packaged. Obviously Elizabeth was attempting to soften her up
before coming the point and had no idea of how insulting she had been.

Daisy was prepared to overlook the stiff-necked
woman’s disapproval because she, not Elizabeth, held the upper hand. The only reason why the Elizabeth Melvilles
of Scotland came calling on Canongate’s notorious wadwife was to borrow money.

The awkward silence which followed suited Daisy
just fine. She wished her cousin would
get to the point of her visit and leave her to her endeavors in the gallery
where her half-brother Gilbert Cockie ran his shop.

“I have written a new poem,” Elizabeth proclaimed
as if she were announcing the recovery of the Stone of Destiny from the English
or the Second Coming of Christ. Daisy
had no interest whatsoever in religious poetry, and did not bother to feign
astonishment.

She spared the courtesy of a nod and reached for a slice
of Irish cheddar.

Then she
sat back and nibbled, waiting for the pitch she knew was coming.

“Mister Charteris wishes to publish it.”

“How lovely, Elizabeth,” Daisy said sweetly.

“He also plans to have it translated into English,
and a proper translator does not work for a petty fee. Naturally, he would like
me to help bear the costs of printing. ”

“Naturally.”

Now the pig was out of the poke and Daisy saw no
reason to chase it around the parlor.

“And ye are here because ye would like me tae
underwrite yer project-- How much do ya wish to borrow?”

Elizabeth choked on her biscuit and it took her a few seconds to recover.

“I was thinking more in terms of a sponsorship,
Marguerite.”

Daisy produced her most credible sigh.

“I think the word which alludes you, Elizabeth, is
gift, ” she managed to say without
sounding too put out.

Now she understood why Uncle Melville had exited with such alacrity. Elizabeth had wanted the money but she had no
intention of repaying it. .

“If I were tae do so, every poet in Scotland woulds
be knockin’ at ma door. But since we are
cousins of the second degree, I’ll be waivin’ the usual collateral, and lowerin’ the rate to
seven percent a’ whate’er you choose tae borrow, all out ‘a the love I hold in
ma heart for Uncle Melville.”

For him, not
ye, ye offensive twit.

She hoped Elizabeth could read her mind.

Daisy wondered how long it would take Cousin
Elizabeth to close her mouth. When she finally spoke, she was obviously
taken aback, but not enough to refuse the offer. All of the other moneylenders were charging
their parents and their children ten percent.

“It is
called Ane Godlie Dream. I am dedicating it to Mister Knox. Shall I have Mister Charteris set aside a
copy?”

Daisy thanked her politely. Any poem dedicated to John Knox would be
unlikely to hold her interest, but there was no sense provoking Elizabeth.
She could put it on display when her brother Gilbert’s Presbyterian
friends came to meetings in the gallery.

She bit her
tongue to keep it from wagging on the topic of
the Reformer least it prompt her
overly pious kinswoman to spiel a sermon
on the seven deadly sins. Elizabeth had them memorized.

She had personified each with examples drawn from
Edinburgh’s new merchant class. She insisted Greed had been modeled on the late wadwife Janet Fockart, but Daisy
suspected Elizabeth had used her
own bastard cousin as her model. God’s
Elbow, but she was anxious to see her cousin’s skirts rustling out the door so
she could get back to work.

“Faither says the Episcopalians will hate it,” Elizabeth
continued, as if it would enhance her poem’s value.

“Mayhap ye should exercise discretion and forego
dedicating it tae Knox. In spite of the
behavior of his disciples, he is quite
dead and unless he resurrects he will never know the difference. Besides, if
what I am hearing is true, this is not a good time tae be offending those who
follow the Episcopal model. If the rumors which reach my ears serve me, we may
all be reading from the English prayer book soon.”

Thankfully Daisy’s reference to Knox and religion
were enough to get Elizabeth back on her feet and headed for the door. When she
had cleared the stoop, Daisy quickly closed the door and latched it. She emptied
her mug of ale into a flower vase and filled it up with
whisky from the Meldrum stills. She carried the cup with her and headed
to the gallery to finished
carving the wax for Queen Anna’s last brooch. The memory of her cousin’s
retreating rump improved her mood.

About Me

I was born in Cleveland. I Yahoo map my old house on Hillsboro Road. Grandfather's ghost would be delighted that the property now adjoins Endora Park. He was a gardener for the city. Growing up as the only protestant kid in a Catholic neighborhood in Cleveland prepared me for almost anything. Professionally, I loved being a trial lawyer, I loved prosecuting major crimes, and I loved relating to juries. I cried for the victims and I still do. On the day I retired I knew what I wanted to do and I am doing it!